The Very Revd Dr John Behr to deliver Patristics Lectures at St Andrew's in 2017

St Andrew’s is pleased to announce that the renowned Orthodox scholar, the Very Revd Dr John Behr, will be presenting two series of lectures in Patristics from 10 - 20 August, 2017.

All are welcome to enrol in these intensive lecture series as part of accredited tertiary study (undergraduate or postgraduate) or simply to come and audit.

Father John Behr is the Dean of the prestigious St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (Crestwood, New York) and its Professor of Patristics teaching courses on the Fathers of the Church, Dogmatics and Scriptural exegesis. He also teaches at Fordham University, where he is a distinguished lecturer in the Department of Theology.

Father John will cover some of the major figures of both the early Christian and Byzantine periods who were responsible for the development of key teachings of the Christian Church.

More specifically, the first series of intensive lectures (10 – 13 August, 2017) will focus on some of the Early Church Fathers, such as Melito of Sardis, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus and Origen, addressing how they saw theology, the criteria they used to decide what texts were to be counted as sacred Scripture, and how they interpreted these sacred books. Father John will also closely examine some of the teachings of these Fathers, especially those concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ, the Trinitarian God and salvation. Finally, the lectures will also examine the question of how a Christian should follow Christ by looking closely at the witness of the martyrs.

The second series of intensive lectures (17 – 20 August, 2017) will focus on Patristic anthropology. If the person of Christ preoccupied most of the first millennium, and the last century was concerned with ecclesiology, there is no doubt that the most pressing concern today is the question of anthropology: what is it to be human? This course unit will focus on the three most important Fathers for this topic: Irenaeus of Lyons, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor. Students will have the opportunity to read together some of the texts of these fathers very closely, bringing their writings into dialogue with Scripture and contemporary reflection.

Below are brief descriptions of the units on offer, thier schedules and audit enrolment forms: